


Zwischen Immer Und Nie

by fineandwittie



Series: And I'll call you by mine [7]
Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types, Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Always, Angst, Interlude, M/M, Oliver's POV, because Oliver is clearly a tiny raging ball of angst, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-18 20:43:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13689459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fineandwittie/pseuds/fineandwittie
Summary: Elio wanted someone to find the book he'd given Oliver, see the inscription, and ask, Who was in silence?Well, someone did.





	Zwischen Immer Und Nie

“Who was in silence somewhere in northern Italy in the mid eighties?” Charles asked. 

The words ran through me like a jolt of electricity. I didn’t have to look up to know that he had taken down my hardbound copy of _Armance_ , the one Elio had given me all those years ago. Just hearing them aloud, after all this time, was enough to leave me gasping, drowning in the sudden wash of grief, longing, regret, so strong and so twisted up together that I could tell one from the other. 

My breath stuttered in my throat and I stared hard at the page in front of me. I’d been absorbed in the words just a minute ago and now I couldn’t remember what it said, couldn’t see it through my abruptly blurred vision. I curled my hand into a fist under my desk, digging my fingers into my palm hard enough to turn them white, hoping to claw my way out from under this crushing tide of emotion and longing. 

I hadn’t through of Elio in weeks, and I’d felt loose, easy, able to breathe. It was one of the longest stretches I’d ever managed without thoughts of him. It gave this moment, when Elio’s words echoed across the years to me and his silence, which had by then lasted eight years, was an almost palpable thing that time and my own stupid heart had lodged in my throat, gave it a bitterness as sharp as it had been the first day back in New York after my Italian summer. 

_Elio_ , I thought desperately. _Oliver…I miss you. You left a hole in me that’d never been filled._

Where was he now? Who was he with? Did he even spare me a thought now and then? Or had I been shunted to the back of his mind, boxed up and left to rot away, as though that Italian summer hadn’t changed the very core of my self, hadn’t re-written the universe and my soul along with it?

My going away from him had left wounds in me, festering gashes that never healed and never would. I was infected with my love for him.

I felt cold, my fingers and toe numb. Elio’s silence was sitting in my throat again. Twisting in my guts like a fist in silk, ready to tear at any moment, was something not quite regret and not quite longing, but lived between the two.

I looked up at Charles, a smile on my face. I had gotten very good over the years at hiding this. At smiling or laughing or kissing away the very idea that I wasn’t perfectly content in my life. “A dear friend.”

Charles raised an eyebrow, grinning at me. “And how dear was this friend?”

A scream got itself trapped somewhere in the back of my throat, which was just as well because I couldn’t have let it out anyway. Charles didn’t understand the magnitude of his own ignorance in this, the utter wrongness of his implication, which was at the same time completely correct.

I couldn’t say _Elio is dearer to me than life itself._ I couldn’t say _I would trade almost anything I have for the chance to just see him once again, just to exchange a single word, to hear his voice again._ I couldn’t. 

Because how could I explain how dear Elio was to me? How could I explain that he _was_ my life, the life I should have lived, the life I was too much of a coward to live. 

“I stayed with his family when I did that Italian residence in grad school.”

The grin dropped away into a frown. “The one where you made all the gambling money?”

I rolled my eyes at him, smile still firmly in place. I could play this part. I could ape the life that I was expected to lead. I was good at it even, because it was all I ever did anymore. I hadn’t the courage to do anything else. 

I dreamed about it, sometimes; finding the courage to do something about the ache that lived in my soul. I’d wake in the middle of the night, the memory of Elio’s mouth or cock or fingers lingering bittersweet in my mouth, and realize I’d been weeping in my sleep. Liz begged me to see someone about it. If she was still awake when I woke, she’d shift uneasily and often leave the room. It unsettled her, I think, because it hinted at the interior beneath my mask and suggested just how much of myself I kept from her. 

“Yes. That summer. His name was Elio Perlman. He was buying himself a copy at the little bookshop in town and thought I might like one as well. Something to remember the summer by.”

Charles blinked and then narrowed his eyes. “You realize this is a romance, right? Did you actually read it?”

I was, I knew, treading on very thin ice. I shook my head and lied, “I couldn’t bring myself too. I was always afraid I’d ruin it.” 

Only a part lie. I had a second copy of _Armance_ in my bedside drawer, where it always lived. I’d read it so many times now that I could recite whole parts from memory. No one had ever asked me about it before, not this copy nor the other one. Not even Liz. I wondered if she suspected something had happened.

“Huh.” Charles shrugged and re-shelved the book.

It slipped back into place so easily and yet, it had shaken something loose in me that I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to slot back. Elio’s words echoed in my head. _In silence, in silence, in silence_.

I wasn’t sure how much longer I could bear the silence.


End file.
